[RESOLVED] Does anybody know...?

vaaaska

Oh, it's Friday.

vaaaska

Bump...

Weedpacket

Not any more.

Jason_Batten

No it's Tuesday...

Elizabeth

Perhaps it's Friday in some dimension somewhere.

<-- waits for Weed's discussion of space/time continuum

vaaaska

Elizabeth wrote:
Perhaps it's Friday in some dimension somewhere.

<-- waits for Weed's discussion of space/time continuum

You see, my position on the subject WAS valid all along. 😉

Weedpacket

I would have commented - but I reckoned leaving the thread ended on the bump was more aesthetically pleasing. Sort of a naive melody.

Elizabeth

No way, we want to hear it! Go Weed!

vaaaska

Bumpity-bump... 😉

dalecosp

IIRC (or maybe "understand correctly") the astrophysicists have evidence for up to 11 dimensions now, which would explain some deep questions like why we can't see God, what happened right at or just prior to the Big Bang, where socks disappear to during the rinse cycle, the last resting place of Jimmy Hoffa, etc.

And it would probably allow 'room' for it to always be Friday, also, from a certain point of "view"....

David_James

I heard a rather bright guy say that Einstein's theory of relativity was just a model, or way of understanding, realities that are otherwise beyond our comprehension. He said (this guy I know) that gravity "is something" and it just hasn't been discovered what "it" is (if in fact it can be discovered) and that the Einsteinian theory of mass and things falling towards each other is once again, just a way of envisioning it. We must remember that modern science provides ways of measuring and reproducing effects and not necessarily a way to understand the "truth of the thing" (in fact sometimes, it is a barrier to this understanding).

Even the so-called 4th dimension isn't really a dimension in the sense of the 3 dimensions that we can truly verify scientifically (sciensia, 'scuse my latin - "to sense"). (But then what can I say about gravitational time dilation. Gosh.)

Finally, I would definitely say that the spiritual is not a dimension, but is substantially real, as real as a physical chunk of matter is. So, IMO, God isn't IN another dimension, God just IS (Pure Omnipresent Being).

Sorry, my posts are so "serious". That's just who I am. 🙂

Weedpacket

Well, all theories are models; that's what they're for. The theory of Special Relativity doesn't have a Minkowskian metric any more than a theory of dairy management has udders. As for "beyond our comprehension" - that's pretty loaded. How well do you comprehend chairs? Well enough to use, I'm sure; well enough to make one no doubt; but how do they work?

As for the "fourth dimension" - a dimension is just an axis used to locate something. If we're still talking about Einsteinian spacetime: what's so difficult to comprehend about latitude, longitude, altitude and date? (Aircraft instrument black boxes record how many parameters?) Dealing with six dimensions is an everyday occurrence. Every time you use a coffeecup, you not only have to keep track of its location (three dimensions), but its orientation as well (roll, pitch, and yaw - another three dimensions). And then of course you go and put it down somewhere and forget just where ("I had it not five minutes ago....") If this guy you know has trouble with four dimensions, how would he cope with the infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces quantum physicists deal with on a regular basis?

Saying that it's "just a way of envisioning it" is a copout: what else can we do but find ways of envisioning things? To understand ballpoint pens do I have to stick one in my head? (Apart from cleaning out earwax, naturally.) People who dismiss scientific theories on such grounds should do well to come up with some sort of workable alternative that doesn't involve "envisioning" anything. Stress workable. That rules out "ignoring anything you can't cope with and hoping it goes away", because reality won't do that: a clock that's accelerating will run slower than it would if it had been in free fall (gravitational time dilation. Gosh).

I'm sorry, but just because something is unfamiliar I don't leap to the conclusion that it's incomprehensible. There's no reason to think there's some magical distinction between Euclidean space (where the distance between two points is sqrt(x^{2+y^2+z²⁾⁾} and the Minkowskian space of SR (where the interval between two events is sqrt(x^{2+y^{2+z^{2-t^2)).}}}

It's also why I don't go looking for God in the gaps: all it means is that once those gaps are explored and mapped, God has to go and hide in even tinier gaps - and that seems just so ignominious a lifestyle for God.

Sorry; People making pronouncements about things like this when they patently don't know the first thing about the subject always piss me off. But hey, if you want to discuss spacetime....

Elizabeth

My day is now complete, thanks weed!

Jason_Batten

mmm sprinkles

David_James

Thanks for your reply weedpacket, and your right I really don't know very much about these matters.

But I do have a certain capacity to grasp truths about reality that I believe many times science cannot. And this business about the gaps that God is in. That is not at all what I was saying. I knew someone once who was obsessed with the "god particle". <-- NOT ME.

Weed, although I can't fire back an impressive reply I know that I spoke extensively with a couple of individuals (my wife and her doctor of philosophy friend from England) who both have very high IQs and education, who in turn introduced me to certain very important ideas about, about, ... well, all kinds of stuff. These I read into -- specifically, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, but more generally a metaphysical understanding of reality (read common sense) and conversely the shift towards rationalist, existentialist and finally scientific methods over the past 500 or so years. But I must add to this -- belief in God and spiritual realities is core to my understanding.

I really see the truth in what you said about comprehending a chair and I agree with much of what you say (dimensions in terms of tangents, etc, very good!), but I feel frustrated right now by my own lack of learning into these areas of the First Cause, matter, subtance, etc, and furthermore what science is and is capable of.

And yes, I do have a workable alternative to this, but your response makes me convinced that I shouldn't even attempt to share it.

goldbug

And yet again, the Weedy intellect makes me feel like a 3rd-grader. 😃 Encore! 🙂

vaaaska

Weedie wrote:
Saying that it's "just a way of envisioning it" is a copout: what else can we do but find ways of envisioning things?

"Wonderful. 5 stars out of 5. A wonderful performance!"

I tried to mark this thread [RESOLVED] (again) but it won't let me. But I will perceive that it was and so can all of you now.

😉

dalecosp

'Tis a rather inspired post, good points all. We have said before how fortunate we are to have a genius among us, and 'tis still true.

Weedpacket wrote:
It's also why I don't go looking for God in the gaps: all it means is that once those gaps are explored and mapped, God has to go and hide in even tinier gaps - and that seems just so ignominious a lifestyle for God.

I kinda don't like the suggestion that God is in an ignominous situation, but you didn't really say that. Not at all, to be sure. But why do we have to be able to use any physical means to find him? Is the only truth in the universe that which is provable by the Scientific Method?

We have four finite dimensions that we can exist in. And they are, though expanding, finite. It seems likely that the fourth dimension will have an end, as well as the other three? Can't say I can prove it mathematically, unfortunately. However, if it ends before the gaps are all "mapped out", can we exactly say that (H)e is hiding? Seems to me that much evidence points directly at Him, but since He isn't in the four Einsteinian dimensions, we don't wish to think of the possibility that He is (out) there. We think that there were 11 active dimensions prior to 10^-43 seconds, and then seven of them went "poof" and are not physically observable. If He created all of our four dimensions, and the other 7 back then, and the other n, how do we know he's in them at all?

If He's physically outside any dimensions we can measure (and I use "physically" somewhat loosely, and measure, and....), is that even more ignominious? Just because we can't find Him, with an instrument, is that a black mark against His character?

Seems to me that if Someone knows that we're never going to find him with a spaceship or $foo_technology, it's only reasonable to expect that, if He is benevolent, He's going to use other means. Science gives us circumstantial evidence of the existence of a Designer. It cannot, and will not give us absolute physical evidence or proof/b of a Designer outside of observable space/time unless the Designer chooses to, I should think. So, I might propose that just because we discover a new "gap", as 'twere, and God doesn't flash lights at us or host a talk show, it doesn't mean that He's not there - it's possible we've looked directly at Him and not recognized what we've seen.

I should shut up ... I'm afraid that someone, esp. Weedpacket, might think I was launching some kind of tirade against him, or scientists, or people with really good brains. Not the case at all. Just some thoughts I'm trying to express, and some inkling of what I really believe about life and so on.... forgive me if it offends, 'twas not the intent.

Elizabeth

And who's to say that it's not mathematical at all, perhaps biological instead... perhaps we're all just smaller pieces of the bigger whole being (i.e., God) We're just cells in a big body, each with a specific purpose in life, as is the case with our own red and white blood cells. In fact, maybe our cells are having this same conversation right now 🙂 And anyway, weren't we supposed to be created in the image of God? So perhaps the meaning of life and the answer to the universe lies right beneath our own skin.

<-- waits for the weedie hijinks to insue 😃

Jason_Batten

Weedpacket just needs a hug, he needs love and affection. GROUP HUG!